All Things Considered

The man known as the Godfather of Go-Go has died. Chuck Brown pioneered a musical style of percussion-heavy funk that was born in Washington, D.C. Brown died at age 75 after suffering from pneumonia. Robert Siegel has this remembrance.

Looking to get more popular on Facebook? Alex Melen will sell you 1,000 "likes" for about $75.

Melen runs an Internet marketing company. About six months ago, companies he worked with started coming to him more and more with a simple problem: They had created pages on Facebook, but nobody had clicked the "like" button.

"You would go there, and there would be two likes," Melen says. "And one of them would be the owner. And people right away lost interest in the brand."

For the right price, Melen can fix that.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

One of Mexico's greatest writers has died: Carlos Fuentes. He was 83. Fuentes was a central figure in the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s and '70s. And he was publishing fiction and essays until the end, including an essay published today in the Mexican newspaper Reforma. I'm joined by Ilan Stavans, professor of Latino Studies in Amherst College. And, Professor Stavans, give us a sense of the broad sweep of Fuentes' career and what made his work so important.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

One of Mexico's greatest writers has died: Carlos Fuentes. He was 83. Fuentes was a central figure in the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s and '70s. And he was publishing fiction and essays until the end, including an essay published today in the Mexican newspaper Reforma. Our own book critic Alan Cheuse knew Fuentes and reviewed many of his novels. Hi, Alan.

ALAN CHEUSE, BYLINE: Hi, Robert.

SIEGEL: And first, give us a sense of the broad sweep of Carlos Fuentes' career, and what made his work so important?

When Facebook goes public this week, the company will be valued at roughly $100 billion.

It will be the highest valuation ever for an initial public offering of a tech company. Is Facebook really worth this much money?

One way to frame the question is to consider a single fraction.

The number on top of the fraction is the total value of the company. The number on the bottom is the company's profits over the past year. This fraction is called the price-to-earnings ratio. It's widely used by investors in stocks.

Over the past century, the average price-to-earnings ratio for big U.S. companies has been 15, according to Anant Sundaram with the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. The ratio for Apple is about 15. The ratio for Google is a bit higher.

Lisa Marie Presley is a curiosity. Famous from birth, she is rock's only real princess. Her face is a stunning combination of her parents' best features. Her marriages have been, well, unusual. Who could forget her awkward television kiss with then-husband Michael Jackson? Or the few months of wedded bliss to actor and Elvis fanatic Nicolas Cage? She has led a colorful life — one that overshadowed her music career when she started making records in 2003. But on her new album, Storm and Grace, she has found her voice.

India's Supreme Court is now weighing arguments by opponents and proponents of legal homosexuality. Same-sex relationships were decriminalized in 2009, but a number of political, social and religious groups are fighting to reinstate a colonial-era law that punished homosexual acts with prison time. Public health workers say legal recognition of India's gay community is critical in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

Garth Knox was born to play the viola. As a youngster, he already had two sisters who played violin and a brother who played cello. "So for the family string quartet," Knox says, "it was very clear from the start which instrument I would play."

On his new album, Saltarello, Knox traverses almost 1,000 years of music history, playing not only the viola but also the medieval fiddle and the viola d'amore, a forgotten member of the viola family with an extra set of strings vibrating underneath the fingerboard. Knox says the instrument appeared and then disappeared in musical history.

Voters in Germany's most populous state, North Rhine Westphalia, have delivered a major blow to the ruling party, the Christian Democrats, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel. Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz talks with Michael Kolz, the chief political reporter for German station Phoenix, about why the results in North Rhine Westphalia matter and what they mean for the left-wing Social Democrats.

Transcript

GUY RAZ, HOST:

And if you're just joining us, this is WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz.

In North Carolina this past week, voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman. A solid majority of the state's African-American voters backed it as well.

The very next day, President Obama publicly endorsed same-sex marriage. But will that affect black turnout in support of the president in November? Here's Tanner Latham from member station WFAE in Charlotte.

Weekends on All Things Considered continues its "Why Music Matters" series with stories of music fans, told in their own words. Today's story is about Amy O'Neal, a choreographer who took on the challenge of dancing in complete silence.

"I had to do a performance a couple years ago where I couldn't use any music," O'Neal says. "I had 15 minutes without sound. I felt like, OK, well, I need to have some kind of circumstances to deal with — so I asked people to bring me different outfits to wear. I would end up changing out there and sort of embodying whatever outfit it was that they had brought in."

O'Neal says that although she liked the idea at first, seeing video of her performance was a rude awakening.